no light, no light
by Emmel1118
Summary: Her life is split into sections: before, during and after her time in Seattle. It changed her in ways it takes years to understand. ((and even then some things are too big to comprehend)) - oneshot - Izzie/Alex


_you can't chose what stays,  
and what fades away_

 _florence + the machine, no, light, no light._

 _..._

Her life is split into sections: before, during and after her time in Seattle.

It changed her in ways it takes years to understand.

((and even then some things are too big to comprehend))

...

She moves on with her life, with everything.

-but there's always a voice in the  
back of her head that  
screams

((alexalexalexalexalex))

so she never really can

and she's not sure why it comes as such a surprise

he meant the _world_ to her

after all

...

She locks it away, somewhere no one can reach, because something broke the day she last stepped foot in the city that meant a million and one things to her.

-and anyway, it's so much easier than explaining.

...

The littlest thing acts as a trigger.

 _fairy lights at Christmas_

 _thanksgiving dinner with her friends_

 _beautiful pink dresses_

 _light blue scrubs_

 _on-call rooms_

the list goes on and on

-she stares and stares until someone asks her what's going on, then she'll snap out of it and say

'nothing'

and things go on.

...

Sometimes ((sometimes, mind))

she wonders about them all: about how she used to know everything about them and how now, she knows nothing.

-she misses it.

...

misses them

...

She remembers things, every so often - the way the rain used to fall in the autumn, or a shirt of Meredith's that she had her eye on, or how Alex's eyes used to crinkle when he laughed.

The fragments, wisps, hurt like hell - more than the fully formed memories because unlike them, where the feelings have become desensitised through time, these haven't, because they are new, unexpected.

-slowly, it kills her from the inside out.

...

\- REGRET: to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over (something that one has done or failed to do)

Izzie has a ton of regret.

...

People say time heals all wounds

well,

 _people are wrong_

 _..._

She has photographs, hidden in the back of her wardrobe, slipped behind a loose panel.

She doesn't look at them

((much))

because they make her cry.

...

Her wedding day, her with Cristina and Meredith, George – oh god, George – and a picture of the Space Needle that she bought when she visited it with Alex

-all slipped behind the wood, the pieces of a life that fell down around her.

...

She used to wake up sometimes, and listen to the bird song, and Alex's breathing and enjoy the feeling of his body next to hers, like the final piece of her puzzle, and just lie there.

Now, she wakes up, sometimes, and all that's there to greet her is the empty side of a cold bed and the sound of her own breathing, too loud in the silence.

...

She cried the day she signed the divorce papers. Then she went to a bar and drunk herself to oblivion because everything was

 _over._

 _..._

She grabs the phone everyone once in a while, driven by the conviction that, now – right now – she is going to call Meredith, or Cristina or even Bailey ((but not Alex, of course)) to see how things are.

She always scrolls through the phone, finds a number and stares. Then she switches the screen off, and does something else, the conviction failing, because there is nothing she can say.

She's burnt all her bridges there.

-she can never bring herself to delete them, though, despite the fact she never calls

...

Sometimes, she forgets

Sometimes, she is happy.

Sometimes, she can get through the day without her heart feeling shattered.

...

People come and go, fading in and out of her life, because they never mean enough, at least when compared to her past.

Nothing ever can.

((like she said, Seattle changed her in ways she doesn't quite always understand))

...

She's lost a lot over her lifetime

and she thinks, maybe, a part of her was lost every time too.

((a lot of her was left in

SEATTLE))

...

She wonders if they think about her

-miss her

or if she is just a footnote in their history

...

Lights flicker, wobbling and moving in and out of focus. She's drunk, the alcohol taking the edge of the emotions that are running riot in her veins, turning her blood ice and slowly turning her heart to stone.

Today, it got too much.

Things lie on a knife-edge, and every once in a while, the balance tips; a trigger reminding her of what she lost, who she lost, how she lost them – how it was all her fault.

Her heart breaks, a million pieces floating away from her faster than she can pick them up again. She stumbles around, blind in her stupor, tears cascading down her cheeks like a broken fountain - as the weight of what has happened crushes her, pins her to ground, and she can't breathe.

She screams and screams, lying on the floor, struggling to breathe, drowning in regret and remorse because she made a mistake, running away, and the past is the past for a reason.

-but no one hears her

The pieces of her heart scatter to the four winds, and she can't get them back.

...

In the morning, she wakes with the pictures of her past dropped on her bedroom floor. She picks them up, slips them behind the board.

She looks herself in the eye in the mirror, smoothes down her hair, dries her eyes, a flicker of a smile ghosting her lips

and just gets on with everything.

...

People soon learn not to ask, even for the most innocent of reasons, about her past.

She never talks about it, her lips sealing shut, because she doesn't have the words to talk about it. So the box remains shut and when people ask her how she came to here, to now, she just shrugs and says

'life brought me here'

...

Sometimes she lies in bed, and takes the clock back.

She imagines she's lying in bed in Meredith's house, back when everything was okay, and George wasn't dead and she hadn't messed things up with everyone

((with Alex))

She spends a moment in the past, before reality hits her

 _..._

She wants to go back, to Seattle

-but something, at the last minute, always stops her.

...

 _once upon a time I was falling love_

 _now I'm only falling apart_

 _total eclipse of the heart, Bonnie Tyler_


End file.
